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Everything posted by Abra
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My tagine, alas, has still never arrived. Hey Paula, welcome back!
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Well, I can report that my pate de campagne was really wonderful. The recipe I used was my tweak of a recipe I got from SeaGal, who in turn tweaked the recipe in the book to combine it with a Pepin recipe. It's evolutionary, but tastes exactly traditional. It's a really time-consuming process to make it, best spread over two days, and then it's been a week curing in the fridge, but it was all worth it when we cracked it open last night to serve as part of a multi-course extravaganza. To see the boudin noir on the plate, and a lot of conspicuously excessive comsumption of really good food, click here.
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Last night two personal chef friends and I had a slumber party, the main feature of which was a dinner that began at about 6:30 p.m. and ended at 2:30 a.m. It all started in honor of my coming across a few bottles of hard to find wine - a Cayuse Syrah, a Leonetti Merlot, and a Varner Chardonnay. We set out to pair the untasted wines with decadent and delicious foods, each of us taking one wine and creating two dishes to pair with it. And then, we had the leftovers for breakfast. With the Varner Chardonnay Scrambled egg with lime creme fraiche and caviar, and bloc de foie gras on crostini with truffled salt and a balsamic reduction. Copper River salmon ravioli with arugula pesto. With the Leonetti merlot Homemade pate de campagne with three mustards: violette, piment d'Espelette, and noix. Homemade boudin noir, and home cured pork confit and guanciale sauteed with fresh peas and garlic scapes. With the Cayuse syrah Sorry for the taken-by-candlelight colors, lamb lollipops with a strawberry rhubarb chutney and potatoes sauteed in duck fat with fresh chives. Salad with lemon vinaigrette, candied lemon zest, and crispy fresh herb fritters. There were also two desserts a cream cake made with Paula Wolfert's Basque aromatic mixture and fresh peaches in raspberry brandy, which we had with some homemade vin de noix, and a pastry-chef made tart that inexplicably didn't get photographed, but was a delicious sablee with mascarpone and wine-glazed pears, which we had with some Torii Mor port. A blazingly hot and clear morning woke us and inspired us to eat again, something we'd sworn never to do just a few short hours before. Soft scrambled eggs with truffled salt and a saute of home-cured bacon, potatoes, and fried sage leaves, plus a little pate and caviar on the side, and a fruit bowl to counteract the cholesterol. Should I mention that these meals were eaten almost entirely out of doors, and good portions of them were eaten in pyjamas? Every single thing was delicious, with the possible exception of the (I made it so I can say so) boudin noir, which was tasty but really, really visceral and squishy. The Cayuse was by far my favorite of the wines. The company was awesome. Not only are they dynamite cooks, they clean up after themselves! I feel so lucky today.
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Lucy saves the day! I hope. I'm only taking your word for it that the boudin looks correct, but your word has been good for so many other things, how can it be wrong this time? I hope those cooking instructions will work for sausage alone, since mine is just meant to be one of three courses. And in my course there's also the pate, and some pork confit that I think I'll do some fried sage leaves for since my sage is going crazy, and then some sugar snap peas sauteed with my guanciale. It's a very rich plate already, and I'm afraid to add the potatoes and apples to it, although I might change my mind in the next couple of hours. They still might not eat it, but then, they haven't seen those pictures!
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It's already poached, that was the last step last night. Ruhlman says to warm it by baking in the oven, but what I need is to get it to hold together more, firm up, not just be warm. I suppose that I could poach it again, but I'm worried that if I get it any warmer than I did last night the fat will render out. Michael, are you here?
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Ok, all you weird guys, now I really need your help and advice, if I want to serve this stuff tonight, which I'm not sure I do. Let me backtrack and say that although I did a reasonable job of cleaning up the kitchen before I fell into bed, the morning light revealed a myriad of blood splatters that had been too small to notice last night, under the circumstances. Moving slowly (there's probably a good reason why we don't normally drink Scotch and bourbon at the same time) I methodically wiped down every single surface in the kitchen, especially the floor. I could probably be arrested for the amount of blood on the floor, if kitchen pigicide were a crime here. Then I went to see if it had all been a bad dream. I fetched the smallest of the sausages from the fridge. It looks pretty innocent, except for the revolting string. Bravely, I cut into it. On the one hand I'm thinking "nice definition," but on the other I'm thinking about how soft and gooshy it still is. It takes a hot knife to get even a semi-clean slice. I've been thinking to give the slices a quick sear in a little duck fat. Oh gag me, it's melting like foie, even with the lightest sear. Now I ask you, would you eat this? Taking one for the team in a major way, I do eat it. The flavor is still good, not astounding, but good, albeit ever so faintly liverish. But the texture is relatively horrid, soft, melting, just like having a mouth full of blood and fat. So now what? This is supposed to go on a charcuterie plate tonight, with some pork confit and the pate de campagne I made last week, and haven't cracked open yet. Please, heaven, let that at least be good! I don't know whether some other cooking method would get the boudin to firm up more, or whether the fact that it was a frozen, coagulated blood product doomed it from the start. Please, give me your thoughts. Can this sausage be saved? Without some major transformation, it isn't going to rise above the level of a science experiment.
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What does this have to do with charcuterie, you may wonder. The bottle is empty, the glass is full. This is all post-processing refreshment, reinforcement, renewal. Wish you (at least one of you) were here to help me out! Instead, alone, this is what my kitchen looks like A fucking abbatoir, that's what. If you're thinking of making boudin noir, plan to have someone else to help you. Someone weird, who loves blood all over the place. Someone with a strong stomach. Someone who loves to clean up. Like, in my case, my husband is out of town. You know how sausage goes better with four hands? Well, my stuffmeister husband is out of town, and I had to go it alone tonight, because I have a "girl chef" dinner party tomorrow and need to get this sausage on the road. Me, I normally don't drink a lot of straight Scotch, but tonight, if the bottle weren't empty, I'd be drinking more. Actually, I am drinking more, but I've switched to bourbon. It's that bad. Ok, so let's start from the beginning. Maybe my "small dice" is not small enough, but here's how the mix looked when I first started, following the directions closely, with the exception that I couldn't find any fresh chervil, so I subbed a bit of fennel pollen. Utterly gross, right? You're supposed to taste it for seasoning by frying up a bit. I didn't want to get another pan dirty - little did I know - so I microwaved a portion. I'll spare you the picture of the micro'ed sample, but suffice it to say that I had to go sit in the comfy chair and take a few deep breaths before I could even bring myself to put some in my mouth. It looked like cat food. Way worse than cat food. Now, I like blood sausage. I've eaten it in two or three countries and loved it. But this boudin noir looked horrifying. If you think it looks bad raw, just be grateful that I'm sparing you a picture of how it looked after being zapped in the micro. Hey, guess what, it tastes good! One important thing - I used the Asian blood product, which has water and salt added. After I weighed out the salt called for in the recipe, an intelligent little voice in my head said "wait, this blood has added salt!" So, I added only about 1/4 - 1/3 of the salt called for in the recipe. That was already enough, when I tasted. If you're getting that same Asian blood, with water and salt added, be very careful when you add additional salt! Ok, more deep breaths, let's have a go with the immersion blender. When I've eaten blood sausage before, it had a pleasingly smooth texture. So I had at it with the immersion blender until it was a lot smoother, but still with a few bits left to provide definition, even though it looked more horrifying than ever. See what I mean? But hey, I have an sort of emulsion, and I'm ready to stuff. The trouble is, I have no wide-mouthed funnel. Ok, my husband isn't here to solve this problem, so I take a chef's knife and an extra funnel and give it a mighty whackl. Voila, wide-mouthed funnel. Oh, the cut's not straight? Drat. So now I need duct tape. That's what a guy would do, right? Duct tape the sucker to one of the stuffer tubes? Rats, where has he put the duct tape? Ok, here's some shipping tape, why wouldn't that work? See where this is going? I get so enamoured of my improved stuffing tool that I forget that nothing's holding the casing onto the tube. Oh my god, the casing slips off the tube and the blood goop is running out all over the place I take a picture of how clean I am personally, just to make myself feel better. Amazing, right? Lots more deep breaths. I finally get the stuff into the casings, and rinsed off. Not too terrible, right? But now, the sausage doesn't fit into the fucking pan. I only made half the recipe, and I have the big Le Creuset saute pan, and I have it at 170 degrees, which in itself is an issue, and it's way too much sausage for the pan. Crap, now what? I can't cope. It's too much, I feel faint. I let it cook as best it can. I come back every so often to try to turn the sausages, to ensure even cooking. Bloody water splashes all over the floor and the cabinets. What am I, totally fucking crazy? Evidently. Finally, the sausage seems to be about 150, although not in every part. I surrender, and set the oven for 170. After 15 minutes in there, we have sausage. I put it into the fridge, and open the liquor cabinet. It'll chill, and so will I. Tomorrow, I'll probably saute it up, in slices. If I don't feed it all to the cats. We'll see. And I'll let you know.
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Thanks for posting this. I'll be following your blog with interest. Steve, it's too bad you can't go. Rancho Gordo beans deserve to be world-famous!
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Look, green jowl bacon!
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Oh good, you're much older than I thought. For some reason, I'd thought you and BryanZ were about the same age - two kick-ass kids blowing us all away. I mean, you still blow me away, but at least you're old enough to raise a glass with. Thanks for a really fun blog, and we'll be watching your culinary star rise, I'm sure. Hey, are you gonna tell us your name, so if we see you in Food and Wine we'll recognize you?
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We are SO not tired of your cooking! That's some beautiful food you're turning out, creative and interesting, nicely executed, mouth-wateringly photographed. Are you totally sure you're a teen-ager??? And thanks so much for the garden pictures. The difference in the growing season between SA and up here in Almost Alaska is really startling. That pistachio pesto - is it basil and pistachio?
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From everything I've read, the batter should rest at least one, and even several hours. It apparently has to do with the hydration of the flour, thus the tenderness and tensile strength of the finished crepe. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong! And Susan, I see that crepes sold frozen at the store have paper between, so that's what I'd do, although the stack I refrigerated for a day didn't stick together at all. I'm almost ready to try another batch - the ones above are looking so beautiful.
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The only head I've eated is tete de veau, calf head. It was boiled, and very gelatinous. Your baked heads look much drier. And like others, I'm sure, I'm wondering about the eyes. I have a hard time eating eyes, and lips, even of fish. It just seems too personal.
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Chris - that duck looks and sounds awesome. I'm going to make that one soon, but first I'm making your lop yuk. It just still calls to me, from about 20 pages ago. I put off the second part of making the pate campagne until tomorrow. I think it's a good candidate for being a 2 day recipe, although that timing isn't suggested in the book. It has a lot of steps.
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That's so well said, although I've never been to Beth's, but it's exactly what I think about Dick's. I'm pretty sure we all agree, it's not about the food. People love Dick's because, well, I have no earthly idea. I just know that they do, and that it can't possibly be about the food. And no, they don't have frites. They have sub-par fries. Ok, I'm enrolling in the witness protection program now.
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Chris - I'd go with the apple for the chicken. I haven't made either of those yet, but I've done lots of chicken with apple, and it's very good. The hickory is good too, but gives it a sort of "hammy" flavor. Alder is the most neutral, and to my taste, doesn't give enough of a smoky flavor except to fish. Pedrissimo - that's a really cute little smoker, I've never seen that done before. What's the diameter? I'm amazed that you could do bacon or a brisket in something so small. Today I'm making pate de campagne, now that I finally managed to get pork liver. That stuff is hard to get around here. I'm looking forward to a fun and messy day of meat play.
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That aromatic mix sounds like such a great crepe idea - maybe even in the pastry creme for a milles crepes? For anisette I have Pastis, and Absente. Would either of those work?
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Wow, Klary, I missed your dinner while I was out of town and somehow didn't see this thread. I've been wanting to do that Gateau Basque for a long time, and it looks gorgeous. I also love the idea of using the aromatic mix in crepes - I can do that right away!
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Well, Mark, I can tell you what I'd do with it, which is toss it and start over. But if you decide to re-hang it and live to tell the tale, I wouldn't be surprised!
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This morning I took the last two remaining crepes, rolled them around some quark and a spread of ginger marmalade, and sauteed them in a little butter with a sprinkle of sugar. Just about as easy as making toast. Any idea how long a stack of crepes, well wrapped, keeps in the fridge? I'm guessing 4-5 days.
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With all due respect to Ms.Cat, I disagree. Why not this? It costs practically nothing, and it's the real thing. In fact, it might be exactly like mine, and now that Sam set me straight on the tempering thing, I think it's wonderful. It's always a pleasure to have a good tool, especially when it's inexpensive.
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Well, this is kind of bacon crepe, except that I fried up the lardons first, and then some spring onions, red peppers, and little tomatoes, the latter all cooked in the bacon fat, of course. Then I made a little milk gravy with the tiny bit of bacon fat and vegetable juices remaining in the pan. By then there was no more bacon fat, so the eggs had to be scrambled in butter. It was a fridge-cleaning lunch, but not an artery-cleaning one. Probably I should have added more bacon.
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I've been longing to make that mille crepe since Megan first posted it. In fact, that's a major motivation for getting my pan in shape and mastering the damn things once and for all. I have some home-cured bacon and some farm eggs that are calling to me at the moment, so I think some sort of breakfast crepe is on the menu for today's lunch. I want to use these up, so I can make a nicer batch.
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I'm starting to think that your future might lie in pastry. Your desserts are so creative, and quirkily appealing. And I like your Mom, and I like it that you like your Mom. Can we see some family pictures? Garden shots?
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Wow, nine days is a long brine! Was that a pretty weak solution, like 1 cup to a gallon? Did you use sugar, herbs, or just salt? That's a really nice catering menu you have. I'm especially craving that Brazilian chicken app. And a cool mobile smoker. You really need to join in on the famous ang long-running Behold My Butt thread. A lot of serious home smokers hang out there. Hey, I'd wipe those sausages down with vinegar in a hot second. Fuzzy mold is a no-no, and vinegar seems to nix it if you get it fast.